We sank into silence, realizing that we might not see each other for many days, and that when we did, it would be in a city under French occupation.
'I wrote to Maks' mother,' I announced.
'Thank you,' said Vadim. 'I trust that he died a hero.'
I nodded. 'Any news from Yelena Vadimovna?'
'Last I heard she was well, but that was almost a month ago. She's due in a few weeks.'
'So we can't call you "granddad" yet?'
'Not yet,' replied Vadim levelly, 'or ever.'
Again we lapsed into quiet contemplation, sitting on the low wall and gazing into the river, reluctant to say our goodbyes. We were like three old men who have said, over the years, everything that could possibly be said, who sit outside all day, watching the world as it passes by them, fearful of leaving lest one of them never comes back again; three men who remember that in their distant youth they had been, and had forever expected to be, four. In such times as these, we couldn't even be sure of the luxury of getting old.
'Who were you talking to on the bridge?' asked Vadim.
'When?'
'When we found you – the wounded soldier.'
'Didn't you recognize him?'
Vadim shook his head. 'I barely saw him.'
'It was Pierre.' Vadim looked blank. 'The Frenchman. You remember, he told us all about Tsarina Yekaterina and the horse.'
'Passing himself off as a Russian?' Vadim asked, mildly angry. 'Why didn't you…' but I think he realized that I wasn't in the mood for unmasking any more French spies just now, and left the question unasked.
'Did Vadim tell you about the camp?' I asked Dmitry. 'And about Iuda, Matfei and Foma showing up?' Dmitry nodded.
'The interesting thing is, of course,' I continued slowly, watching Dmitry to gauge his reaction, to see if he would reveal anything, 'that he escaped – Pierre, I mean.'
'So the Oprichniki are not quite so infallible as we thought,' said Vadim.
'No indeed,' I went on. 'Not like them to leave a survivor who can go on and tell everything that happened to him.'
Dmitry turned to me with a look of searching horror in his eyes, straining to turn his battered body. There was something that Pierre might have told me – something terrible – and Dmitry was scrutinizing my very soul to see if Pierre had told me; to see what I knew. Of course, all I'd heard from Pierre were his confused, delirious ramblings, but now I knew from Dmitry that there was something I might have known – something that I now planned to find out.
Soon after, we took our leave of one another. This time there was little expression of emotion. We were all too intent on our personal plans for the next few days. Vadim had one final thing to say.
'We may not do this, you know. It's not something I want to face, but that's a big army out there. I just want to say that if any of us gets wounded, or if things get too hot for us in the city, then we shouldn't be afraid to leave. If we can let each other know, then all the better, but survival is just as important as heroism. All right?'
Dmitry and I both nodded in sombre agreement, and then we parted. Vadim had told us that it was our own affair where and how we hid ourselves, but by some instinct that we had established over years of working together, we headed off immediately in different directions. Vadim went west along the riverbank. Dmitry and I walked the opposite way in silence, but it was less than a minute before Dmitry turned north, back over the bridge.
I continued east. My plan of action had been, somewhat obliquely, inspired by the sight of the French footman being flogged. I soon turned south and headed over the canal into the region of Zamoskvorechye. It was easy enough to find an abandoned house, with planks nailed hastily over the windows and doors, and even easier to break through these naive defences. Whoever had quitted the house had been generous enough to take their servants with them, but not, fortunately for me, generous enough to take all their servants' possessions. It was no trouble for me to find a butler's uniform that fitted. I reckoned that, once the French arrived, a Russian servant would be able to move around the city relatively unmolested. If not, it would be the work of an instant to transform myself to a French émigré servant, welcoming with open arms the liberating army that had freed him from his cruel masters.
The empty house would also make a good place for me to stay, at least for the time being, although I would have to be wary, since the invading masses would also be looking for abandoned buildings where they could be billeted. There were plenty of alternative exits if I needed to leave in a hurry.
And so I waited. Moscow became quieter and emptier as those who had lingered finally left, but still the French did not come. I wandered the streets of my beloved city for the next few days, astounded by the horror of its tranquillity. A few people remained, perhaps one fiftieth of the population, and all were sapped by the distance that separated them from the next person they might see. A week earlier, Muscovites would have had to push and jostle to make it through the busy streets – and would have complained about the overcrowding too – but now it was almost like living in the countryside, but without knowing the rules for such a life. In the country, one can go for hours without seeing another human soul, but when one does, they are always a friend, always someone to converse with. In this deserted Moscow, other people were just such a rarity, but those who were left were used to ignoring the thousands of individuals that they might pass within the space of a single hour, and so they ignored the few that they saw now. Thus even those who remained, that fiftieth of the population, were weakened by their isolation to a further fiftieth of their usual vitality.
It was as if the entire city had ceased to breathe. The physical entity that was Moscow still existed, but the spirit that had made it live was gone. As yet the body that was left showed no sign of decay, but even the most imperceptive of observers would soon be able to see that it was dead. Soon the maggots of the French army would arrive to feast on the remains.
Strangely though, it was a full three days before they arrived. From what I could gather later on, Bonaparte had expected Kutuzov to make a further, final stand at the gates of the city and so had hesitated. Kutuzov made no such defence – it would have been futile – and by the evening of 1 September, it was clear that French troops would be entering the city the following day.
That night, I had a dream.
CHAPTER XI
I WAS IN MY BEDROOM – THE BEDROOM I HAD SLEPT IN AS A CHILD.
I was well aware that this room was nothing like the room I had as a child but, as is often the case in dreams, I knew as an indisputable fact that this was the bedroom of my childhood. Two beds lay, quite incorrectly, along opposite walls of the room, with space between to walk. In the far wall, which the heads of both beds abutted, was a window. The curtains were drawn shut, but one could perceive that outside it was a bright, sunny winter's day.
On the left-hand bed lay a boy, sleeping on his side with his face to the wall so that only his back was in view. It was – and again I knew this for a fact without seeing his face – myself at the age of five or six. On the same bed, with her back to the boy, sat my wife, Marfa, showing polite interest in what she saw on the other side of the room.
Standing at the foot of the other bed was the Emperor Napoleon. He faced the woman who sat on the bed, his wife – the Empress Marie-Louise. In her lap she held a large bowl, and in the bowl there were figs. She held up a fig to the emperor, who took it in his hand. He raised it to his mouth and bit into it and, as the green skin ruptured, the red flesh and seeds oozed out around his lips. He licked his lips clean and then took four more bites from the fig until only the stalk was left. He popped this into his mouth and swallowed it, as if that had been the tastiest part of the whole fruit, and then he licked his fingers.